| |
A WEEK BEFORE HIGH-Performance Camp
Twin Cities Ice
***
AFTER HIS CONVERSATION with Zack, Aaron knew he didn’t have any time to lose.
He had a meeting with both Katie and Brendan the next morning to review his training plan for the rest of the month and discuss travel logistics for camp and the upcoming Grand Prix series. They didn’t often coach him on the ice at the same time, so his opportunities to talk to the two of them together were usually limited.
They met in the cramped little coach’s office at the rink. Katie had evidently come from the farm; she hadn’t yet changed into skating clothes and still had on mud-spattered boots. Aaron fidgeted, nervous, while Brendan gave him his ice times for the upcoming month and Katie queried him about which elements he felt he needed to focus on most.
“Anything else we need to cover?” Brendan asked as he clicked through a spreadsheet on his computer.
“Actually, yes. There was one thing,” Aaron spoke up before he could lose his nerve. What if they said no? What if they were upset at his request? He’d already asked for so much from them this year.
“What’s up?” Brendan asked.
Aaron took a breath. “I want to skate to a different song for my free skate,” he blurted.
Katie and Brendan both looked at him. Brendan had on his mild-curiosity face that Aaron knew was his way of saying What the hell?
Katie said it out loud. “What the hell, Aaron?”
“You know I’ve been frustrated with the program as it is—and the music. It’s not working.”
“You have that music,” Katie said, her voice studiously neutral, “Because you didn’t have a strong vision for your program when we started.”
“I know,” Aaron said. “But I think I do now.”
“Camp is two weeks away.” Brendan looked pained. Aaron squirmed. Enthusiasm from either of them at this late notice.... He’d known he couldn’t have expected that. And they hadn’t said no. But still. That didn’t make their reluctance fun.
“Then we better get started sooner rather than later, right? I mean. If you’re okay with that.”
Katie and Brendan often told their skaters to speak up and ask for whatever it was they felt they needed to succeed; even so, Aaron worried he was overstepping. Katie and Brendan had other skaters to worry about, and this was a change that was going to take up a good deal of time when that was never something any of them had in abundance.
His coaches exchanged wordless looks, which made Aaron squirm more. The way they seemed to be able to communicate without speaking was unsettling and, in this moment, didn’t bode well.
“It wouldn’t be a complete re-choreographing,” he said, too antsy to let the silence sit and wanting this too much to not argue for it the best he could. “Just... disassembling and reassembling it to different music. With a different vibe.”
“That’s still a lot of work,” Katie finally said. “Mostly for you and Brendan.”
Aaron nodded. Brendan was, after all, in charge of most of the skaters’ choreography. That was part of the division of labor that he and Katie had, and, generally, it worked well.
“Is this about what I think it’s about?” Katie asked, narrowing her eyes at him.
“I don’t know. What do you think it’s about?” Aaron went for his best attempt at innocence.
For the first time, it occurred to him that whatever Katie knew of what was going on between him and Zack, Brendan knew as well. Which was fine, as far as it went, Aaron didn’t expect Katie to keep secrets from her spouse, especially when they pertained to someone they both coached. But he didn’t want to talk about Zack in front of Brendan. As much as he trusted Brendan, he was still closer to Katie.
Katie gave him a long, piercing look. Aaron made himself meet her eyes and reminded himself she couldn’t actually read his mind.
Finally, she sighed, throwing up her hands as she stood up. “If you can work it out with Brendan, it’s fine with me,” she said. She seemed less annoyed than resigned, and Aaron drew a sigh of relief.
Once Katie had left for a session on the ice with Charlotte, Brendan turned to Aaron. “She’s not upset with you, you know.”
“I know,” Aaron said. Now that the dread of the conversation was over—and he’d gotten what he wanted—he was thrumming with excited energy again.
“And I’m willing to put in the time with you, if this is what is going to make it happen for you,” Brendan said. “But it is going to be a lot of work. More for you than for me—and you’re going to have to bring this to camp like we haven’t been making changes on short notice. The music you have is a safe choice.”
“Safe never won any medals,” Aaron pointed out.
“All right, safe isn’t a guarantee,” Brendan acceded. “But do you know how many Swan Lake routines have won gold? Or Romeo and Juliet. Or...”
Aaron cut Brendan off. “Okay, I take your point. But I’ve skated to warhorses for years and they haven’t gotten me where I want to go.” Warhorse was the term in the skating community for any piece of music frequently used—some said overused—by skaters at all levels. They were solid songs, and while Aaron never objected to a good Tango de Roxanne, he craved variety and the originality that could come with it.
“All right.” Brendan seemed resigned. “What do you have in mind?”
Aaron pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Can I show you?”
***
AT THE END OF THE SONG—IT wasn’t quite the right length for a long program and would need edits, but what didn’t—Brendan narrowed his eyes at Aaron. Aaron was used to scrutiny, but he still had to ball his fists to keep himself from squirming under Brendan’s assessing gaze. He was pretty sure this song had just told Brendan everything there was to know about his deal with Zack regardless of what he already knew from Katie.
“This?” Brendan asked.
Aaron nodded. “Yeah.” He felt exposed—though, he reminded himself, if he was going to skate to his song all season, that was a feeling he was going to have to get used to.
“You’re sure?” Brendan’s face and voice were studiously neutral. Aaron tried not to freak out at the lack of reaction from him.
“Yeah.” And then again, nodding firmly. “Yes. I’m sure.”
“All right then,” Brendan said, a smile breaking out on his face. “This song is incredible. Let’s get to work.”
***
FITTING IN TIME FOR developing a new program—even one that was mostly, as Aaron had said, pieces of his previous program rearranged—was a challenge. He and Brendan met late that same night, in the time Aaron would usually be working at the rink by himself if he wasn’t home doing books for the restaurant. Or with Zack.
To Aaron’s surprise, Katie arrived partway through their session. As she had been that morning, she was dressed for the farm; she must have come after her evening rounds with the cows.
“Getting closer,” she said, watching Aaron finish a step sequence. “But—”
“Yeah, I see it,” Brendan said, without her needing to finish the sentence. He did a little pivot on the ice, then launched into another set of turns and steps that took him from one end of the sheet to the other. Aaron’s calves burned just watching it.
“Do you think you can do that?” Brendan called from the other side of the rink.
“Uh. Sure.” Aaron, in fact, thought no such thing. All the individual elements were items he was perfectly capable of executing, but in that combination, with the deep edges and flair that Brendan always brought to step sequences... not so much. That was where the hard work, and the magic, would have to be.
“Also, Aaron,” Katie chimed in. “Please fix your arms, if you’re not gonna skate to a warhorse don’t skate like you’re a warhorse.”
“Got it.” Aaron rolled his shoulders to loosen some of the tension. Katie was right—his posture and carriage needed grace and flow. Even if his legs felt like they were going to fall off.
“Ready? And—go,” Katie and Brendan said at the exact same time.
Aaron chuckled to himself at them as he took a crack at the footwork. The steps were challenging and the speed with the music would be brutal, but it sang.
Yes, Aaron thought as his blades carved patterns on the ice. This is what it’s supposed to feel like.
He couldn’t wait for Zack to see it.
***
THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE relentless, unending work. His free skate, to his dismay, got worse, not better. His technical elements were solid, the artistry was there, but the emotion, after those first brilliant days, was a mess—sometimes. Sometimes it was brilliant. Consistency had never been Aaron’s strongest attribute, but that had always been about jumps, not the rest of it. Whatever was going on, it was driving Aaron up a wall.
Frustration, as it turned out, did not help him skate any better.
One night, only a few days before camp, Katie reminded him he could go back to his old program. Whereupon he freaked out at her completely about needing to show his true self and broke down in tears in the middle of the ice.
“Breaktime,” Katie declared prompt, and steered him to the door.
Once he was seated on the bench in the hockey box, Katie got him tissues and his water bottle then sat beside him.
“I’ve noticed a pattern,” she said. “And I’m curious if you have.”
“I have noticed nothing except the rapidly diminishing number of days before I have to show this program off at camp.”
“Your footwork is strong, your jumps are solid, and I have nothing to say against your artistry.”
Aaron nodded. Praise, welcome as it was, didn’t make him feel any better when it still wasn’t working. And after he’d asked for and gotten a new program.... He sank his head into his hands.
Katie rubbed a gentle hand across his back. “All of which means it’s your emotion that isn’t working.”
“Sometimes it works.” Aaron tried to cling to that. If he could get it to work when he needed to... but no. People could win a medal by luck, if all the stars aligned. But he couldn’t have the kind of season he needed to get to the Olympics solely on luck.
“It works when it’s just me here with you,” Katie said. “And I’ve walked by a few times when it’s just you and Zack. It works then too.”
“You’ve seen that?” For a moment, Aaron was startled out of his misery.
“I work stranger hours than you know. But anyway. It works for me and it works for Zack. Not—” Katie gestured to the rink, where a handful of other skaters were on the ice and another handful were working on off-ice drills on the mats. “When anyone else is around.”
Aaron pondered that for a moment. “Huh. I guess I hadn’t noticed.”
“Which tells me something. If this is the program in which you want to showcase your true self.”
“That I’m only comfortable being that self around you and Zack?”
“Bingo.”
“How do I fix that?” Aaron asked plaintively. He hoped she had the answer. Katie came closest to understanding what it was like to be from a world so different from what anyone else came from. If anyone knew how to deal with this problem, she did.
“No idea,” Katie said. “I’ve been retired for years and still struggle with it. But,” she said, standing and offering him her hand to pull him to his feet. “Now that you know what the problem is, maybe you can work the solution out for yourself.”
***
WORKING OUT THE SOLUTION himself probably should have meant spending time alone either with meditation or journaling to try to crack the problem that Katie had raised. And Aaron did, dutifully try that for a couple of days. But while he could see the problem, clearly, he didn’t see a solution to it, at least not one that was anything other than practice.
Dealing with fear—physical or emotional—was mostly about desensitization. At a given point he had to believe the problem would solve itself through time.
And time, of course, dictated every aspect of his life. Eventually, on the night before camp, he had to accept he had done all he could to prepare for it and allow himself, instead, some time to relax, whether that meant thinking about something else or thinking about nothing at all.
He went over to Zack’s place knowing this was his last chance to see him not just before camp but before the season and its pressures truly got underway. Unfortunately, the challenges of having any sort of personal life while competing were already making themselves known, at least in Aaron’s head. He’d have to talk to Zack at some point about all the rules around food and sleep he was going to have to follow to be at his competitive best.
He didn’t think it would be a big deal, but he still felt weird talking about it. What was normal for a competitive athlete could easily seem—and perhaps was—disordered to a normal person.
Zack asked questions where he was curious, but shrugged most of it off. Aaron recognized this not as indifference, but as someone accepting him at face value.
No wonder I feel uncertain around nearly everyone else, he thought to himself.
“I have a question,” Zack said after dinner. “Which you can totally say no to, as I realize the timing is either bad or romantic... in a pervy way.”
Aaron barked with laughter. “What is it?”
“You seem to like the bondage thing,” Zack said.
Understatement. “I do, but that’s not a question.”
“I bought some proper rope for doing some proper work with it. If you’re interested. I mean, it’s right before camp, so if you’re not or not now I super understand....”
Zack was babbling, and Aaron was aware he found it quite cute. He was also aware that his whole body suddenly felt pulled towards Zack with a force he couldn’t control.
“Yes,” he said.
Zack blinked at him, startled.
“Did you think I was going to say no?” Aaron asked.
“I didn’t... I wasn’t thinking at all,” Zack said. “Most of the people I’ve dated, if we were doing stuff like this, I met them in spaces where it was a given they shared the interest. So, you’re exciting and new and I am out of practice.”
Aaron smiled. He liked the idea that Zack sometimes felt as out of place as he did. He found it reassuring and flattering.
“I like being exciting and new,” Aaron said. “Now tell me what’s next.”
***
AARON GOT UNDRESSED as Zack laid out the different lengths of rope and explained how they could make this about art or sex or some of both.
This is why I like you, Aaron thought as he stretched—that was the reality of skating. Every moment that he moved, he was either looking for more mobility or to work out some stiffness from his training.
Zack stared him, clearly fascinated.
“What?” Aaron asked, coming up from a standing backbend.
“How long can you keep your back arched like that?” Zack asked.
Aaron squinted at him. “With my head upside down, not that long.”
“But if you were lying on the ground?”
“You mean like this?” Aaron said. He dropped onto his stomach and reached back to grab his ankles in a yoga bow position. “Pretty much indefinitely. Why?”
“Can I tie you up like that?” Zack asked. “You would be so beautiful and strange.”
***
ZACK MADE AARON GET up on the bed for the actual project.
“If my idea works,” he said, “it will be more convenient later, trust me. For now, close your eyes.”
Aaron did as he was told. He felt himself drop out of the world as soft rope was looped around his ankles with a knot tied sharply between them. The ropes then found his wrists, and Zack wove and coiled and knotted them up his arms, explaining softly about the different types of rope bondage that existed in different cultures and how he had taken what he had learned in terms of art and pleasure and safety but was also making things up as he went.
Aaron, trapped now in the bow until Zack released him, absorbed maybe half his words.
Zack seemed to sense how far away he was and ran his fingers through Aaron’s hair and across his face. Aaron whimpered slightly, and stretched to capture one in his mouth. He could feel his cock getting hard under him, which felt good now and was going to be torture later. He would surely struggle against his bonds and the bed to get release, and would no doubt only obtain it when Zack said he could.
Zack touched his hands. “Can you feel this?”
“Yes.”
“No tingles, all normal?”
“All good,” Aaron said impatiently, annoyed to have to deal with the world again for the moment.
Zacks hands moved to his feet. “And here?”
“They’re fine,” Aaron nearly snapped. He understood the concern, truly he did. But his circulation felt fine. He’d had pairs of skates that were worse for him than this.
“Good. Then, I’m going to add more rope.”
Aaron hummed and dropped his head forward, as Zack laced rope through the harp-shape formed by his legs, and hands, and back. He tried to picture it, like the cables of a suspension bridge, and while the image pleased him, he still wished he could see it for himself.
“Take a picture?” he asked, breathless. He needed to know and to see what this thing was that he had fallen into with this man.
“Are you sure? I can’t imagine you want anything like this floating around.”
“I trust you,” Aaron said, “and we can delete it later.”
Zack tied a final knot and tucked in a tail of rope. As he stepped away from the bed to get his camera, Aaron felt a moment of desperate fear, not that he would be abandoned like this, but that he would be made to wait even further for his pleasure.
But Zack was back in a moment, caressing his back and his face and his ass, gentling him, the wild animal he was.
Zack’s hands left again, but then there was the click of the camera—once, twice, another handful of times as Aaron threw his head back to make the position look perfect.
The motion sent him rocking on the bed, forward and back over his hard dick that was pressed into the mattress under him. He groaned.
And Zack chuckled.
“You’re very clever,” Aaron managed.
“You have not,” Zack said, “seen anything yet.”
Aaron heard the sound of the snap and zip on Zack’s jeans and opened his eyes to Zack pulling his cock free and jerking himself off.
“Yes, please,” Aaron breathed.
“Oh good.”
Zack stepped closed to the bed. He placed one hand along Aaron’s throat and under his chin to coax him into lifting his head. Immediately, Aaron opened his mouth to take him in. He needed this—the taste, the smell, the thickness on his tongue and the way it drove all the rest of his life away.
Zack placed one hand in Aaron’s hair and tightened his fingers quickly. It didn’t quite hurt, but Aaron gasped around his cock as more nerve endings came alive.
But the trick was it all was yet to come. Zack tugged softly on Aaron’s hair and the bow of his body rocked forward—over his own hard, miserable cock—as he took Zack in further. Under no control of his own, back and forth he went, trapped, as he fucked his own cock into the mattress while Zack stood there, letting his dick fuck Aaron’s mouth in turn.
––––––––